Dossier 5-6: Turkish Feminism: A Short History

In many ways, it is possible to say that feminism has erupted onto the Turkish political scene in
the latter half of the 1980’s. Since 1983, a number of publications and public
meetings organised by feminists have already made an impact on political and
intellectual circles in Istanbul and Ankara (cf. Tekeli 1986 and forthcoming).
The general public heard of these women on two separate occasions. In March
1986, a group of women delivered a petition signed by 7000 women demanding the
implementation of the United Nations Declaration of Women’s Rights which Turkey
has officially signed and which legally binds its signatories to accord citizens
equal rights regardless of sex. This petition had been organised by a group of
women who called themselves feminists and who belonged to a service and
consultancy company, The Women’s Circle, whose brief was to “evaluate the work
of women, paid or unpaid, outside or within the home.” It was really in 1987
that feminists literally took to the streets. In May of that year 3000 women
marched in Istanbul to protest against the physical abuse of women and in
particular the battering of women. In June, a group of feminists in Ankara
joined forces with environmentalist groups to campaign against the Ankara
municipality’s plans to convert a park in the centre of town into a multi-story
car-park. In October of the same year, a one-day festival in Istanbul was
organised to rally support and raise funds towards setting up refuges for
battered women. The following month, feminists set up their own stand (which
they called the Temporary Modern Women’s Museum) in an Istanbul book fair,
during which they displayed artefacts ranging from kitchen utensils to IUD’s
that women are confronted with in their daily lives.

These activities were
accompanied by other forms of public action that by their very nature had less
impact compared to those described above. Various publications including
magazines, literary novels, and pamphlets became available in bookshops. One
such novel which was later made into a film sold more than 60,000 copies before
the official censors, the State Committee for the Protection of Juveniles from
Amoral Publications, banned its distribution. Writings by European feminists
such as J. Mitchell, A. Michel, L. Segal and A. Oakley, as well as Egyptian
writer Saadawi were translated into Turkish. Public conferences and discussion
panels denouncing the abuse of women in the home, in media images, and in legal
stature were held, and women’s associations such as Istanbul-based Association
for Women’s Solidarity were set up. These activities took place in the
intellectual circles of Istanbul and Ankara and drew the attention of people who
were already involved in politics. In a country where the vast majority of the
population does not have the habit of reading as a leisure activity, feminist
publications had a limited impact even in the big cities.

The aim of this paper is to
try to identify if possible something called ‘Turkish feminism’. I say “if
possible” because at present it still is very difficult to talk about a
specifically Turkish feminism. The very nature of feminism itself poses an
important problem for women who attempt to question their conditions of
existence when the latter are shaped by cultural and social forces that are not
explicitly Western. Black women in Britain as well as the United States have
already voiced their dissatisfaction with what Amos and Parmar (1984) have
called ‘imperial feminism’. These women have challenged the ethnocentric
conceptions of the family and sexuality with which white women have worked to
create a universalistic feminism. The shortcomings of Western feminism with
regard to women in the Middle East have also been voiced by Kandiyoti (1987) and
Lazreg (1988). The difficulty of delimiting a specifically Turkish feminism is
compounded by the fact that Turkish feminists themselves at the moment seem to
take over concepts from Western feminism without subjecting them to serious
questioning. Finally, if it is possible to argue that Turkish feminism was born
in 1982, then obviously, this is too short a period of time for the movement to
have attained a coherent stand or stands. Optimists have argued that feminism is
still in its infancy in Turkey (Tekeli op. cit.); more pessimistic observers
might say that the movement was stillborn. The latter viewpoint seems to inform
Kandiyoti’s conclusion in her recent (1988) paper analysing what she calls the
‘woman question’ in Turkey.

In this paper I shall try
to investigate the political space within which these activities are inscribed
and to explore the extent to which this space shapes the nature of these women’s
demands. In the modern Turkish context, feminism appears firstly as an ideology
that attempts to articulate the position of women in society as a central
political issue. In this respect, it has had to carve a space for itself by
engaging in debates with two other ideologies that attempt to capture the same
political space: left-wing ideologies propounding a class-based political
struggle and Islamic discourses. Both Islam and the left in Turkey today have
their own recipes for the ‘liberation of women from capitalist oppression’. The
various political forces that are informed by these ideologies make up the
non-parliamentary opposition. It is through an examination of the different
considerations, social, political, as well as cultural, that led to the
formulation of these demands, that the conditions of existence of Turkish
feminism can be delimited.

One of the means through
which I shall attempt to understand the nature of the feminist movement in
Turkey then, is by trying to explain the implications of the positioning of the
women’s movement in the ranks of the non-parliamentary opposition. What are the
reasons that account for this positioning and how do Islamic and leftist
discourses which share the same political space shape the content and demands of
the Turkish feminists? Rather than rely on some universalistic attribute of
feminism, (for example attributes that it might have as a new social movement),
I will try to answer the question in a more historical manner; that is I will
try to look for these answers in the political role that women have played in
Turkey.

Debates
regarding the position of women in Turkish society have occupied a central place
in the political and ideological agendas of the Ottoman and Turkish states at
three crucial moments. The first was during the period of Ottoman reforms
instituted through the activities of the young Turks in the middle of the
nineteenth century. At this juncture it was reformist men, whose main concern
was to find ways of reviving a floundering empire, who voiced concern about the
position of women in society. A second wave of debates defining the role of
women and, by extension the meaning of womanhood took place in the early years
of the establishment of the Turkish Republic and culminated in the
enfranchisement of Turkish women in 1934. Although elite women were more
vociferous in stating their own positions during this second phase, the first
and the second wave of debates on the ‘woman question’ culminated in what
various observers have called ‘state feminism’ (Tekeli 1986; 185; Kandioty,
personal communication). The third time that feminism and women have occupied an
important space in the public gaze in Turkey was after the military coup of
1980. As summarized in the introductory comments of this paper, this movement
differs considerably from the other two in that the main actors seem to be
women. The fact that this movement has largely developed in opposition to ‘state
feminism’ explains to a certain extent its place among the forces of the
non-formal opposition. The last part of this paper will try to elucidate the
political demands articulated by these women and define those parameters that
may constitute Turkish feminism.

1. The Ottoman
Period.

At the turn of the
nineteenth century, concern regarding the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire
led to the formulation of various projects that hoped to reverse what seemed to
be an inevitable process. One of these projects, that of ‘modernisation’, became
the dominant discourse to which other sections of the population, especially the
Islamic intelligentsia, felt they had to respond.

From 1839 to 1876,
far-reaching reforms were undertaken by the Ottoman bureaucrats in the fields of
administration, legislation and education. These reforms were implemented in an
atmosphere where the reasons for the decline of the Ottoman Empire were
intensely debated. Bureaucrats as well as young thinkers educated in Europe had
begun debating the meaning of the French revolution and the new ideas emanating
from it.

Freedom, equality and the
notion of citizenship were among these ideas. As shown by various historians
dealing with this period, these debates created a cleavage between the
Western-looking bureaucratic elite and the relatively illiterate popular
classes, whose way of life was becoming increasingly threatened by the new mode
of social regulation imposed upon them. Thus, while the former stressed that
progress was not simply a matter of technology but also of a rationalistic,
positivistic world-view such as existed in the West, the latter increasingly
took refuge in Islamic precepts, arguing that the decline experienced by the
Ottoman Empire was caused by the materialistic values of the West and the
abandonment of the Islamic way of life. These debates crystallised in two
opposing ideologies, one stressing Westernisation, progress and enlightenment,
the other emphasising Islam and tradition.

As Kandiyoti’s
(forthcoming) insightful analysis of this period shows, the position of women in
the Ottoman polity was constituted as an ideological terrain upon which these
two opposing viewpoints fought out their conflicts. The progressivists argued
that the emancipation of women was a prerequisite of civilisation. Women as
mothers and wives were responsible for the well-being of the Ottoman man and for
the creation of future enlightened generations. To create responsible citizens,
it was necessary first to educate and enlighten the women who were the mothers
of the modern citizens of the Ottoman Empire. Women imprisoned in the shackles
of tradition and superstition could not fulfil this role. Traditional arranged
marriages, divorce laws leading to the easy repudiation of wives, polygamy and
the segregation of the sexes were seen as constituting the major obstacles
preventing the education and liberation of women (Tekeli 1982: 196-199). By
contrast Islamists argued that the Koran provided a readily available blue-print
according to which social life was to be organised, and that any deviation from
these regulations would lead to corruption and moral depravation.

It was in this climate of
opinion that the scattered voices of women themselves begun to be heard in
newspapers and journals of the period. One woman writing in Yerakki,
(Progress, a political journal devoting a special page to women), in
1868 deplores the idleness of relatively wealthy urban ladies and suggests that
the education of women would help transform them into useful human beings. It is
easy to recognize here traces of arguments put forward by Wollstonecraft in
Britain in the previous century.

But other more specifically
Ottoman arguments were also advanced. In view of the dominant position of an
Islamic discourse whereby any attempt to criticize veiling, segregation or
polygamy was immediately branded as a sacrilege, and in conjunction with the
various attacks suffered by women who appeared in public (albeit in a covered
buggy) in the company of their husbands, a moderate Islamic approach to the
position of women gained prominence. The main proponent of this moderate view
was Fatma Aliye Hanim, who even wrote a polemical essay against the view put
forward by a young ulema that polygamy was sanctioned by Qur'anic law. By
contrast, Fatma Aliye argued that polygamy was an Arab custom that had been
adopted in the course of the centuries.

To prove her point, she
gave extensive references to the life of the prophet and to the exalted position
of the women of his time. It is interesting that these same arguments are now
being put forward by contemporary Islamist young women as I shall show
below.

Other,
more insistent voices began to be heard after the institution of the Second
Constitutional period (1908-1919) ushered in by the Young Turk Revolution. This
revolution put the Committee for Union and Progress into power after the
overthrow of the Abdulhamit and his absolutist rule. In the new atmosphere of
freedom, a number of exclusively women’s organizations were formed and new
women’s journals began to appear. Although many of these associations were
charity organisations and although the journals carried articles mainly on
homemaking, fashions and health, there were a few among them that were more
overtly political. The women who were writing in these journals were organising
around a number of issues. A prominent theme in their articles was their
disappointment with the new era of ‘freedom’. Freedom, they argued, turned out
to be only freedom for men; the reformists forgot about the emancipation of
women once they obtained state power. This assessment led some of these
articulate women to argue that it would only be women who could liberate the
women of the Ottoman Empire.

Again, however, the
liberation of women is used synonymously with progress and is linked closely to
education. Emine Sniye, Fatma Aliye’s sister argues in 1910 that progress can
only be obtained through the education of women and that it is up to women to
undertake women’s education (Terakkiyat-i nisvaniyye’yi kimoen
bekleyelim?). A woman (Ismet Hakki) writing in Mehasin (Things
Beautiful) in 1909 takes the argument even further by stating that rights can
only be obtained by fighting (Carpismak Intiyari), and that it would be
easier to safeguard rights for which a struggle had been waged.

Kandiyoti argues that it is
best to characterize the second decade of the twentieth century as a period when
the search for a national bourgeoisie intensified and when women were being
incorporated into public life according to their social class. Thus, various
vocational schools, secondary schools, as well as a Women’s University were
established to train well-to-do urban women as schoolteachers and nurses. In a
few years’ time when the Balkan war and the First World war broke out, these
women actively participated in the war effort by raising funds, organising
supplies, tending the wounded and so on. The educational reforms of the Tanzimat
did not only create the educated bourgeois woman. Elementary education in the
Islamic schools and the widespread apprenticeship system that taught these women
basic household skills laid the basis for the creation of a female proletariat
(Isin 1988). These women were recruited as workers in textile as well as
ammunition factories (Guzel 1985: 869-872).

In Istanbul at least, the
increased participation of women in work outside the home created problems for
Islamic ideals of segregation. In 1916, the Islamic Organisation for the
Employment of Women was founded with the expressed aim of teaching women to earn
their living by working ‘honourably’. This organisation provided women with room
and board and allowed them to live a secluded life by taking upon itself the
transportation of the resident women to and from work (Toprak 1988; 34).
Furthermore, according to Toprak, the orgainsation was also promoting marriage
by providing girls with a trousseau and financial support. Marriage was made
mandatory for women over 20 and men over 25, and any resident not complying with
this stipulation was asked to leave.

As this final example also
shows, right before the demise of the Ottoman Empire, women were regarded by
themselves and by the state firstly as mothers and wives. Although educated
women had begun to speak out against the Ottoman family system, the main
discourse was one of progress and education that did not challenge the identity
of women as wives and mothers. This discourse was formulated in opposition to
and at times in compliance with another, dominant discourse that couched its
arguments in Islamic terms.

The Early
Republican Period

It was in the process of
the Republican reforms that the second wave of debates on the position of women
occupied public interest. If the Ottoman debates constituted women primarily as
wives and mothers in need of education, the second constituted them as patriotic
citizens. The new patriotic woman was still a wife and a mother, but she also
had another mission, that of educating the nation. Professional women became an
important symbol for the Turkish Republic, and teaching was exalted above all
else. Within this discourse, women were linked to democracy, rather than
civilisation, and the debates proceeded in the context of sustained attacks by
the founders of the young republic on the Islamic way of life.

It was the activities of
women during the war of independence that were to have an important effect on
this new identity conferred on women (Tekeli1982, Kandiyoti forthcoming). While
the peasant women had been mobilised behind the lines, the educated women of
Istanbul had been active in delivering patriotic speeches in Istanbul and other
parts of the country. Women had vigorously protested the partition of the Empire
and had joined the Society for the Defense of the Nation (Tekeli 1982). But once
the war was over, women returned home to resume their roles as mothers and wives
(Tekeli 1986).

As the leaders of the
nation were trying to create a Turkish as opposed to an Ottoman identity, they
had to contend with the power of Islam.

Different currents of
Turkism that were articulated since the turn of the century were influential in
shaping the version of Turkish nationalism gradually developed by Mustafa Kemal
and his friends, the rulers of the young republic. The development of a Turkish
nation had to be subordinated to other, perhaps more powerful identities. The
Turkish identity, as developed by various thinkers of the period, incorporated
the notion of an essentially egalitarian and democratic Turkish past that also
included the image of
an equal and powerful women, what Kandioty calls a ‘pre- Islamic golden age for
women’. But ideas of progress, modernisation, technological improvement were
also part and parcel of the new nationalism.

The reforms introduced by
the ruling elite of the young republic look very much as though they were
directed at undermining the bases of the Islamic way of life. In 1924, the
caliphate was abolished and with it went office of the Seyh-ül-Islam and the
Ministry of the Seriat, the other linchpins of the hierarchical religious
structure (Lewis 1968; 265). The closure of courts that passed judgements
according to the Seriat and of the separate religious and theological colleges
accompanied these initial measures. In 1925 Atatürk launched what Lewis calls
his ‘great symbolic revolution’, that is he abolished the fez and made the
wearing of hats by all men a legal requirement. The hat was the symbol of
Western civilisation and of progress; it constituted and was perceived as the
greatest threat to the Muslim identity of the masses (Lewis 1968; 269). The
official adoption of the Georgian calendar (1925), the Swiss civil code (in
1926), and of the Latin script (1928) were among other reforms that made it
difficult to continue daily life according to the old standards and
regulations.

Although the Swiss civil
code allowed women many rights that they had demanded during the Ottoman era,
such as the abolition of polygamy and repudiation, laws regulating the dress of
women were not passed until 1935. As argued by Seni (1984), women’s bodies have
been used as vehicles for the symbolic representation of political intent. In
her analysis of village ideology in present-day Turkey Delaney (1984) also shows
how the female body becomes an icon encapsulating the past and the future (the
seed of the man) and symbolising his house, village, and nation. In spite of
numerous incursions into the family life of the Muslim, the republicans seem not
to have been so eager to declare their successes at the level of the symbolic.
The new woman was to take her place in the public life of the republic as an
educated social woman. There would be no difference between men and women, for
whom the values and techniques of the nation would be paramount (Durakbasi
1988). (Male) writers declared that notions of maleness and femaleness were not
issues that the new nation had to deal with, since these were ‘private’ issues
that were under the jurisdiction of the individual man.

Nevertheless, the values of
motherhood were still an important aspect of womanhood. As described in numerous
newspapers, pamphlets, treatises and novels published in the first decade of the
Republic, the new Turkish woman would continue to have children and to be a wife
because it was her duty to the nation. The new woman was a thrifty, enlightened,
professionally trained housewife who, cognisant of the needs of the republic
only used consumer goods produced in Turkey and who experienced heterosexual
friendship only with her husband (Köker 1988:108). Moreover, the new woman was
not to be the ‘over-Westernised mondaine’, but would be honourable and
chaste like her predecessor in the mythic Turkish past.

Kandiyoti depicts the
dominant female image of the period as ‘the comrade- woman, an asexual
sister-in-arms’, whose honour and chastity remains intact in spite of her active
participation in the struggle to liberate and improve her nation. This image
leads her to conclude that nationalist and Islamic discourses concur in
establishing a definition of woman congruent with the true identity of the
collectivity, one in which the sexuality of women is kept under strict control.
Kandiyoty further concludes that the political process started by the Tanzimat
reforms of 1837 gave rise to discourses constitutive of the Ottoman-Turkish
polity, discourses within which women figured as symbolic pawns.

Tekeli’s (1979) argument
that the enfranchisement of women in 1934 was a means of proving the democratic
nature of the Turkish Republic ruled by a single party is largely supportive of
Kandiyoty’s argument. At a time when fascist dictatorships were gaining ground
in Europe, the enfranchisement of Turkish women may very well have been a
symbolic assertion of democracy. As I argued above, the linking of women and
democracy was also part of the struggle against Islamic forces, a struggle in
which images of an essentially democratic and feminist Turkish past were
frequently made use of.

Nevertheless, it is
necessary to indicate that a handful of women, especially between 1926 and 1934
did fight to obtain the vote. These women established the Turkish Women’s
Federation, which during the 1927 national elections tried to show its own
candidates; the women were dissuaded from doing so by Atatürk himself (Köker
1988; 84). Pressures from above had already managed to thwart women’s attempts
to establish a political party in 1923 (Toprak 1988). The attempts by the
federation to obtain political rights attracted considerable criticism in the
press and led to the deposition of the incumbent leader of the federation. Under
the new leadership, the federation declared itself to be primarily involved in
charitable and cultural activities (Köker 1988; 84).

Nevertheless, during the
municipal elections of 1931 the Federation did name its own women candidates,
and they drew up a comprehensive manifesto in support of their cause. This
manifesto, among other things, promised the free distribution of milk to nursing
mothers by the municipalities.

Populism (nalkgilik)
was one of the main ideological tenets of the single party of the nineteen
thirties and forties. This populism, according to the ideologues of Kemalism
also included feminism, or in a literal translation of the Turkish word,
‘womanism’ (kadincilik) (Köker 1988; 106). The official ideology
proclaimed the equality of Turkish men and women. This state- proclaimed gender
equality produced many professional and academic women in Turkey for whom
feminism was redundant since its aims had already been accomplished by Kemalism.
Over the years, these women organised in a number of associations that
proclaimed the primacy of the values of the Republic, education and motherhood.
This double role that was prescribed for women still informs the world-view of
many contemporary academic women, the very people who were able to take
advantage of republican reforms (Köker 1988). For these women Islam constitutes
the main threat to their existence. When religious students agitated for the
right to wear a headscarf in the university, the very institution that was the
culmination of the Kemalist ideal, women belonging to these organisations staged
a symbolic march to Atatürk’s Mausoleum in Ankara and laid a wreath at his
grave. Articles appeared by academic women in newspapers asking women to fight
what was perceived as a retreat to Islam, a retreat that would primarily affect
women’s position in society (Abadan-Unat 1987). In other words, for the women
who were the direct descendants of Kemalist reforms, Islam and tradition
continued to be the main threat to their conditions of existence. By contrast,
secularism, enshrined in the ideals of Kemalism was perceived as their only
protection.

The
opposition between modernisation-Westernisation on the hand and traditionalism
and Islam on the other has been shown to inform the lives of many sections of
the Turkish population. Tapper (forthcoming) describing different forms of
wedding ceremonies in a central Anatolian town in the 1980s reports that
townspeople themselves categorise wedding rituals under the headings ‘modern’
versus ‘traditional’ in spite of the fact that the variety of weddings observed
in the field precludes such easy categorisation. Similarly, a small village near
Ankara is divided into two wards on the basis of whether the daughters of their
inhabitants go to school or not (Delaney 1984). Delaney in a marvellously
constructed argument shows how school for daughters mean uncovering the head,
that is opening to outside influence, both morally and intellectually. The two
main forces that shape the village world-view according to Delaney are Islam,
the old ways, and Westernism in the guise of Kemalist reforms and enshrined in
the very structure of the school. The links between education, women and
religion that I have tried to describe in this historical account, appear in
Delaney’s work as active forces engaged in full-scale battle.

3. The
1980’s

During the sixties and
seventies Turkish women began to be drawn into a rather different form of
discourse from the one that had constituted their mothers as women. The student
movement and the various brands of the Marxist left dominated youth politics for
over two decades. Thus, although state ideology continued to provide a
legitimate space for women’s social and political activities, a new, by
definition anti-state ideology was gradually gaining ground. The humanitarian
and egalitarian discourse on which most leftist ideologies depended offered
women a place in the fight against class domination. But the fight was strictly
against the class system and any other ideology such as women’s rights had to be
subordinated to the main goal. Tekeli, describing these organisations, asserts
that the image of the self-sacrificing wife-mother-sister defined the attitude
of most of these organisations to women (1986; 195). An anti-Islamic stance and
the importance given to progress and to education constitute the main points of
similarity between ideas informing these movements and official state ideology.
What these movements did for women was to give them the experience of
mobilisation against the state.

The reasons why the woman
question, let alone feminism, did not emerge as an important point of focus
before the 1980s can and has been linked to the domination of left-wing ideology
in anti-state circles. Other reasons no doubt can also be discerned. Instead of
debating this issue, I would like firstly to describe the demands of the
feminist movement as it developed after 1980 and to show how it articulates with
leftist and Islamist ideologies prevalent today.

Women who call themselves
feminists are organised in various small groups. As a result of restrictions
imposed by post-1980 state regulation, one of these groups is organised as a
limited company that publishes a journal called Feminist (Tekeli 1986 and
forthcoming), while others established after 1985 are formed as legally
constituted associations. The group that I am involved in rejects all forms of
formal organisation and until May of this year was involved in running a woman’s
coffee shop in Ankara that served as a meeting place for a small number of
women. The different activities that have been undertaken by these groups have
already been described in the opening paragraphs of this paper. Through these
activities and through various publications, these women raise the issue of the
oppression of women as a major area of struggle in contemporary Turkish society.
Although these women speak from rather different positions, they all agree on
the need for an independent women’s movement, and they all accept and actively
support the proliferation of women’s groups representing a wide variety of
ideological positions.

Up to the present, the
Campaign Against the Battering of Women has served as a focus point around which
all these different groups have rallied and co-operated. A booklet produced
jointly by the different groups participating in the campaign and entitled Shout
and Be Heard is a collection of the experiences of battered women. The booklet
argues that the violence against women is part and parcel of male domination and
that it is endorsed by the state. Furthermore, it forcefully demonstrates that
violence against women is not confined to any particular section of the
population, conceived in terms of class, education, or occupational background.
Above all, the pamphlet tries to isolate the family as the major site of
violence against women and argues that women within the family are seen as the
property of the men that are its legal heads. Women in Turkey suffer from
violence primarily from men who are their husbands, their fathers and
brothers.

Western feminism has had a
significant impact on these various groups. Non-hierarchical and independent
forms of organisations, consciousness-raising groups, issue-oriented ad hoc
committees are clearly reminiscent of the Western experience. Moreover, most of
the women in these groups (including myself), or at least those who were the
more active organisers, had had first hand experience of life in the West and
had, as students, been associated with feminist activities in London or Paris.
However, the need for autonomy and small non-official forms of organisation can
also be seen as conditions dictated by the political space that these women
wanted to create for themselves. Firstly, ad hoc organisations were instrumental
at a time when state repression discouraged all forms of extra-parliamentary
political activity. This also helped women who had been involved in leftwing
activism prior to 1980 to organise independently of the ideological pressure
coming from the more-orthodox left which branded their efforts as bourgeois
deviations. As suggested by the foregoing, the refusal of many of these women to
organise in legally recognised political associations was also a way of
distancing themselves from the state and of repudiating state
feminism.

The
insistence on the political nature of the personal is another point of
similarity between Western and Turkish feminism. This insistence has led
feminists to consider the specificity of the Turkish family and its relation to
the subordination of women. The examination of the family and especially of the
relations between women within the family have also revealed strong networks
established by women that could be and were activated to create co-operative and
supportive structures. The concept of sisterhood which Western feminists tried
to promote was seen to already exist in a society that is still largely
segregated along gender lines. (Of course, there are limits to this solidarity,
as is evidenced by the testimonies of women recounting the role played by other
women, especially mothers-in-laws, in their experience of male violence).
Considerations such as these made feminists sensitive to what they began to call
‘women’s knowledge’ (Tekeli 1987, Ovadia 1988).

Apart from these points
that bring the different women’s groups together, there are also important
influences that pull them apart. The divisions that marked the left still play
an important role in the constitution of the different women’s groups. The
emergence of the feminist discourse in the early 1980s was in fact seen by many
sections of the left as a piece of opportunism, a voicing of opinion when other
more ‘seriously political’ voices had been forcefully silenced. During the
course of the seventies, some leftist groups changed their attitude with regard
to women’s independent organisation and instead began to promote such activities
as a way of drawing more support to their more-inclusive projects. Many of the
women active in women groups identify themselves also as socialists and as such
are quite sensitive to criticisms from the left. One consequence of what in
Turkey are largely perceived as conflicting allegiances has been the formulation
of specifically Turkish ‘socialist feminism’ where the struggle within society
at large is described within the terms of class struggle and the struggle within
the family is seen as the locus of feminist activity (Kaktüs 1988). Thus, one
question that cannot be answered at the moment is whether allegiance with the
left as opposed to the state will allow these feminist groups a longer lease of
life.

Apart
from the left, projects that speak to women are developed both by the official
establishment and by the new Islamic movements that have become prominent in the
last few years. The activities of the Foundation for the Elevation of the Turkish woman, an organisation headed by the Prime Minister’s wife is able to
channel considerable funds into its main activities; the campaign to marry
legally women who are joined only by the unofficial religious ceremony and the
campaign to bring health visitors and means of birth control to rural women. A
bi-monthly newssheet published by the Foundation informs its reader of these
activities and praises women who have successfully combined marriage and
motherhood with a professional career. In its insistence on the false security
provided by the religious ceremony, and on the role of women as mothers and as
career women, the project of the Foundation seems to be fairly in line with
tenets of Kemalist feminism. The Foundation also promotes the Motherland Party
and as such acts as the Ministry of Women’s Affairs advocated by the Social
Democratic Populist Party, heir of Atatürk’s People’s Republican
Party.

Islamic
publications that have proliferated in the last three years also speak to the
woman’s question and in the view of one analyst, raise the banner of women’s
rights and women’s emancipation in their attack on secularism and modernity
(Acar 1988)?. That men and women are equal in the sight of God, and that only
Islam can restore women the rights they have lost is a constant theme expounded
in these publications. The ways in which the Islamic discourse intersects with
that of the feminists can be shown by two recent developments. Articles written
by a few women Islamists became the centre of a controversy that raged in the
pages of an Islamic daily which had an intellectual readership and was also
involved with issues such as environmental pollution and student demands. A
woman who identified herself as a Muslim proclaimed that Islam could benefit
from the arguments put forward by feminism. The feminist author that these women
whom the popular press calls ‘turbaned feminists’ most frequently quote is
el-Saadawi. This initial article provoked a variety of responses from readers.
Many of the women who responded repudiated feminism as a product of
Westernisation and modernisation which had nothing to offer to a true Muslim;
but they nevertheless accepted that the position of women is something that
Islamic writers and intellectuals had not been very sensitive about. Muslim
women are attracted to feminism to the extent that the latter questions the
objectification of women and the commoditisation of the female body and
sexuality.

The
aggressiveness of the Turkish male and the physical harassment that women were
subjected to in overcrowded public buses made another Islamic journal launch a
campaign for segregating public transport. The fact that some feminists publicly
embraced these women created a serious rift among feminists. For some, joining
forces with Islamists was compatible with feminism which in the name of
democracy supported the expression of any political demand. Furthermore, the
analysis on which these debates were based, up to point, concurred with the
feminist analysis. Thus, there should be no problem in joining forces with
Islamist women against male society as well as its state apparatus. Other women,
by contrast felt that this was carrying anti-statism too far and that feminism
and Islam could not ever be compatible.

As these last
examples show, the twin parameters of state secularism and modernism as opposed
to an Islam that is now trying to shed its traditionalism and develop a radical
discourse, still define the space within which feminism is trying to flourish.
To the extent that the left has provided another discourse shaping the terrain
within which feminism develops, it occupies a middle position. Like the
Islamists and the feminists, left discourses are located outside the structures
of the state and outside Western capitalism, but like state ideology, it
propounds a modernist, secular world view in which there is no space for
religion. Whether feminism, trapped as it were between modernism and
non-modernism, will be able to survive in these conditions and what forms it
will take in the process of survival are still questions that only the future
can answer.

NÜKHET SIRMAN is associated with the Department of Sociology
at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara - TURKEY.

Acar, F. “Women in the
Ideology of Islamic Revivalism in Turkey: Three Islamic Women’s Journals,”
unpublished paper presented at the workshop on Islam in Turkey, Center of Near
and Middle Eastern Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, London,
1988.